Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specifications (“DOCSIS”) has been established by cable television network operators to facilitate transporting data traffic, primarily internet traffic, over existing community antenna television (“CATV”) networks. In addition to transporting data traffic as well as television content signals over a CATV network, multiple services operators (“MSO”) also use their CATV network infrastructure for carrying voice, video on demand (“VoD”) and video conferencing traffic signals, among other types.
As with any providing of goods and/or services, the service of providing information over a broadband connection is unfortunately the target of fraud and theft. Since the providing of broadband services costs a certain amount, and the more bandwidth resources provided incurs an increasingly proportional amount of cost, unscrupulous users who subscribe to a certain amount of bandwidth resources often attempt to obtain a higher level of service without paying for it.
There are a number of methods by which theft of service occurs, including replaying a different, but valid, cable modem configuration file corresponding to higher service than the legitimate one associated with the subscriber's lower subscribed-to service level. Another method is for a hacker to generate a configuration file and use it to register the cable modem (“CM”). The hacker can generate a file if they discover the shared secret key that an MSO uses to generate a configuration file.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system for assuring that a cable modem downloads configuration information from the correct file on the correct server, and that the configuration information is not altered before a registration request is generated.